Reviews with content warning for Violence - The Golden Enclaves

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The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

82 reviews

risaleel's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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chezler24's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

It has been quite the journey with Galadriel "El" Higgins and I was fairly content with how Novik decided to conclude her story. I tried to predict how it would end based on my guesses with Orion's nature and being, and, while I was on the right track, Novik played with her magic system in ways I had not yet dared to consider (no spoilers of course). I appreciated getting to see Enclaves around the world and realizing that the worldly wizarding hierarchy isn't that different compared to how social hierarchy functioned within the Scholomance pre-graduation. Unfortunately, this global jumping around can sometimes come across as a bit disjointed while Novik attempts to spin out world-building at such a large scale. This along with a random sexual relationship with Liesel amidst her relationship with Orion left me wishing some threads had been edited more tightly for clarity. As a series, I really enjoyed the Scholomance trilogy, but this entry might be the least favorite of the three.

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aseel_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A huge fan of El and all the other side characters, I really liked the linking of certain monsters to the world building, I am happy with how the series and ended, just wished the writing was a bit less descriptive at times

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bookshelfmystic's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

The third book in an original trilogy has a hard task: it has to take the world that’s been established in the first book, the stakes that have been raised in the second, and all of the characters we’ve come to care about and give it all a satisfying conclusion. The Golden Enclaves gives it a pretty good shot, and mostly succeeds.

The pacing is the main thing dragging the book down. El saves multiple enclaves from collapse, with similar tactics each time, which drags just a bit. We even go to a couple of the locations twice. It’s a way to see the broader world outside of the Scholomance, which is neat, but I would have appreciated more variety. It felt like Novik was starting to run out of plot ideas. That being said, each sequence sets up El learning new information, and each of the big reveals hit with appropriate horror. Especially that

enclaves are built on crushing a child to eternal deathlessness as a maw-mouth

- the adrenaline in this chapter was already racing, and the revelation feels like a punch in the gut.

It’s evident that Novik knew where this trilogy was going when she started it. Each of the plot threads was sufficiently wrapped up, even El’s relationship with her family. I didn’t even know I needed the scenes with

El’s grandparents in India, but the depth of her grandfather’s love made me cry

. We get to spend time with many of the characters we met in the Scholomance and a few fun new ones (though I definitely thought Yancy would be coming back later in the book – they spend a lot of time on her for a one-off character). I even started to like Liesel. My last minor complaint, though, is that I still just don’t really buy El’s feelings for Orion. Especially given what we come to find out, he doesn’t really have much of a personality. I fully buy the tragedy of his story, but the romantic part feels a little thin. But I guess the heart wants what it wants. And it did set up a great, emotional conclusion to the trilogy.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

- I started to suspect that

El was behind the destruction of the enclaves

towards the beginning, especially given the prophecy we’ve heard so much about, but I thought it was

related to her using mana at all

. I definitely didn’t call the

maw-mouths

- I continue to love El’s mom’s Wiccan-esque approach to magic and how different it is from what we see from every other wizard in the world.

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nicchen22's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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caidyn's review against another edition

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Sigh. Once the story got out of the school, I lost interest. Plus there wasn't Orion to balance El out. El constantly grated on me through the series, and I didn't really care enough about her to finish this up.

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kaitrates's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

2.5

Update 7/3/23:
Everything took SO long to get to and then the payoff was MEH. The emotional conclusion wasn't there. We were dragged all over the world for what?! To make it longer? UGH

One star because there were some bits of prose that took my damn breath away.
One star for El's character arc b/c that part was satisfying especially as it related to the prophecy. It was nice to see her step into her power and grow in the ways she did and end up surrounded by communmity.
1/2 star b/c I can imagine the reveals were HOLY SHIT moments if you weren't banging your head against the wall to *just* *be* *done* *already*.

__
Original review 6/30/23:

Thank god it’s over how could something that was meant to be enjoyable be such a drag?!

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